Coming Home
by Tara621
Summary: Blaine comes home after an overseas deployment and struggles to readjust to civilian life. His mother, a journalist, is put in a difficult position when the subject of her next assignment is her son.
1. Chapter 1

There are letters.

Phone calls, video calls, emails, sure.

The letters are tangible, though. Words he can keep close to his heart, tight in his fist, drink every loop, tail and smudge with parched eyes.

Pictures are kept separate from the action. Protected.

Words - _love, safe, with, stay - _they go with him into combat.

* * *

Sometimes - okay, all the time - Olivia Anderson wishes she could hold her articles in her hands. There is a comfort in the tangible. And print journalism, however obsolete, does imply actual ink on actual paper. But times have changed. Everything is virtual. Convenient? Yes. But when it comes to her work? There is nothing quite so nerve-wracking as sending a piece out into cyberspace. Thumb drives and backed-up files be damned.

Writing human interest pieces for the paper ranges from mundane to cute to confounding. Her current assignment, though, is downright terrifying. Because this time, the subject isn't the eccentric old man collecting antlers and other bits of wildlife detritus to display in a garden that could be seen from the highway, complete with life sized plastic owls, deer and foxes.

This time, it is personal. Word had gotten around that her son's deployment would soon be coming to an end. Would she consider writing about Blaine's homecoming and reintegration into civilian life?

She'd written about Blaine before. About how his being deployed had affected her. It had actually been a relief to put words to the gaping, son-shaped hole where her heart used to be.

Her husband, David, had disapproved. He was retired military. They were a military family. Deployments were expected, and it was an honor to sacrifice for their country. Even if it meant sending a son off to war. (Sentiments like this aside, Olivia still turned over in bed the nights Blaine was gone to find David's side of the bed empty. She would inevitably find him in the kitchen, hunched over his laptop. Checking his email. Hoping, she knew, for an update from halfway across the world.)

This new assignment, though, is something else. It is one thing, after all, to write about one's own experience. It will be quite another to mix work and family in the way that writing about Blaine would require.

* * *

Thinking back, it is hard to picture his homecoming. It seems strange that something he had imagined for so long would, when conjured, produce only a blur.

Vibrant green overwhelming eyes dulled to the blinding beige of a sun-drenched desert. Rich, homey smells. The buzz of quietly excited conversation. The stretch of a forced smile spreading tension through his face. Clenching his jaw in determination to keep it in place. Family advancing on him one by one. His brother, father, mother. Mechanically hugging each one.

Words play across his mind. Relief. Joy. Contentment. Warmth.

What he _should _feel in this moment.

But instead, he goes through the motions with an air of detachment. Feeling nothing.

It is disconcerting.

Only the strength of Kurt's arms that night sear his memory.

Safe.

Home.

He exhales.

* * *

Seeing Blaine again is like having that final, crucial puzzle piece snap into place.

He is at once familiar and foreign. But there is excitement in rediscovery.

That first night, they hold each other. Breathe each other in. Kurt still fits in Blaine's embrace - no longer without a tether, he lets exhaustion and elation pull him into oblivion.

* * *

That is not to say that he sleeps. That first night in Kurt's arms, his eyes scan the darkened room for suspicious movement. Ears attuned to every creak of the floor. The shudder of the refrigerator as it settles in for the night.

Adrenaline coursing, he is grateful for Kurt's position between himself and the wall. If not exactly a secure location, it is at least a protective one.

He only begins to nod off when the sun peeks over the horizon.


	2. Chapter 2

The house is as he left it. But his body, his brain is not. His heart is encased in a block of reinforced concrete. He is floating, disconnected, a balloon swaying impartially above a body that moves mechanically through daily tasks.

The sameness of the house is foreign now - _he _is foreign now. Disoriented. Running his hands along surfaces and objects in an effort to find purchase. To fit.

He picks up the framed picture of himself, smiling widely beside Kurt at the lake's edge before his deployment. Kurt had been staring at him as the picture was snapped. Grinning distractedly. The wooden frame is solid, giving the fleeting moment in time weight and substance. There is a sense of unbridled joy in the image - arms slung comfortably around each other, sun-kissed faces, lake winking in the background.

Averting his eyes, he places the photo carefully face down on its end table. Relief sighs through him at not having to look at the stranger with his face.

Kurt greets him in the kitchen with a kiss and a steaming mug of coffee.

"Thanks, hon'." A tight twitch of the lips that probably looks nothing like a smile.

They link hands, sitting on the same side of the table, chairs close. He runs his thumb over Kurt's tentatively. It feels familiar and new at once. A sidelong glance. (Kurt's head is tilted in thought, eyes curious but content.) A sip of coffee.

"I've missed this," he ventures on a sigh.

Kurt leans his chin on Blaine's shoulder, mumbling affirmatively.

"I used to literally _dream _of coffee over there. Real stuff. This stuff." He swallows what might be his first genuine smile since coming home at Kurt's affronted sputtering.

"Oh, well that's _great_, Blaine. Coffee."

"Yup." A reflexive squeeze of the hand still in his.

Kurt's voice suddenly drops to a seductive purr. "Made it myself…"

Their conversation melts into laughter, which breaks loose from some neglected place in Blaine, giving him the courage to state the obvious. "This is kind of weird, huh?"

"What? Having a conversation in the same time zone as you? The same room?"

A squeeze of assent.

"Kind of like dating again." Kurt's eyebrows quirk playfully.

"Yeah. I guess." He sips his fantastic coffee. Breathes.

"I think I like weird," Kurt smiles. He raises their interlocked hands, kissing Blaine's knuckles - a promise.

"I love you…"

It comes out more of a plea than he intends.


	3. Chapter 3

Blaine is in the shower when his mother stops by.

The doorbell. Three sharp, simultaneous knocks. And her voice raised in greeting.

He stands under the spray, waiting for the tension to leach from his muscles, his heartbeat to slow. Staring at the mud-colored tile floor, mouth pursed, he breathes.

He has to get his shit together. They aren't hermits.

Cranking the cold water up all the way gives him a shock

_Snap out of it, Anderson._

Shower off.

Step out.

And just like that, the numbness is back. He catches himself staring at his reflection in the mirror. It's marvelous how unchanged his body is, when his brain refuses to engage properly at every turn.

Soft, new roomy sweatpants and an old t-shirt of Kurt's are laid out on the bed for him, evoking memories of childhood. Security. Comfort. He pulls the clothes on, setting his jaw when the room wobbles and blurs.

Of course.

Even as mummified as he is, wrapped in endless layers of suffocating gauze and stiff duct tape, the tears come.

His mother's voice filters up the stairs as he presses fingers to his eyes.

* * *

"I won't stay long," Olivia promises, handing Kurt two paper bags emblazoned with the McDonald's logo. "Just wanted to drop this off."

The aroma of the burgers and fries is enough to make Kurt's stomach growl. "Don't be silly! Sit down! Blaine's in the shower, but I know he'll want to see you. Especially since you brought food."

Olivia's mouth tips wryly. "I figured you guys might not want to cook, and he'd mentioned missing fast food, so…"

"Yeah, he'll love it. Do you want something to drink?" Kurt asks, rooting through a bag and snagging a couple of fries.

"I can get it." Olivia takes the bottle of water from the refrigerator to the table. Toys with it.

A minute passes, then her gaze locks on Kurt. "So…how is he?"

The question brings Kurt up short. They've asked each other variations of it for months. Over lunches and dinners. Via texts, emails and phone calls. Pored over what communication they did get, attempting to glean inflection and read between the lines of letters and emails. Analyzing microexpressions and pauses in phone and video calls for hidden meaning. Was Blaine safe? Did he seem tired? Quiet? Stressed? Sick or in pain? What did he say? How did he say it?

Shaking his head to clear it, Kurt resumes his hunt for paper plates. His hand finally closes around a few, haphazardly scattered in a high cupboard.

How _is _he?

He has just opened his mouth to respond when he hears Blaine's voice.

* * *

Tears long forgotten, Blaine finds himself careening wildly toward anger.

His mother has dropped everything to bring them - _him_ - fast food at 1300, when she should be sequestered behind her laptop or conducting an interview. As if the magical properties of McDonald's would restore him.

Just an all-American guy eating a Big Mac.

The way she dropped her voice to ask Kurt how her own son was - as if he couldn't answer for himself - and worse, how Kurt had been just about to tell her.

As if he had the slightest clue.

"_He _is right here."


End file.
